Goodbye, Sweet Girl

I haven't written an entry to this blog in years--life simply got too busy, and I since I write for a living, I have to prioritize my work. But in case anyone comes across this blog, I'm coming back to finish the story.

We had to say goodbye to Madge this morning, 13 years after she came into our lives. It was a good 13 years, and I'll always be grateful to her for becoming part of our family and giving us so much love.

Madge came from West Virginia and was part basset hound and part pit bull, an odd mix that often caused people to stop me on the street and ask, "What kind of dog IS that?"

Madge was anxious and suspicious of strangers, but she unreservedly loved the the little child who snuggled with her on the couch and took her for walks. I suspect she probably watched with puzzlement over the years as that child grew up into a six-foot-tall adult.

She was physically powerful and possessed a pit bull's frenetic energy--once she jumped up on the window seat in our living room and shattered the glass with her butt, and another time dug a passageway through a four-foot snowdrift in the backyard with her head. Nevertheless, she was surprisingly gentle with an assortment of small dogs who were her companions--Tippy the pug, Joey the mixed terrier, and Kirby the puggle, who've all since gone to the Elysian dog park.

As she got older, she spent most of her time sitting on the couch with her last companion, our six-year-old chin-pug Tigger. She had to have her cancerous spleen removed last year, which gave her another 10 months to enjoy sniffing the bushes at the park, barking indignantly at delivery workers, and sitting every morning with my wife for a little girl time.

But eventually she got sick again, and after struggling for several weeks, last night let us know that it was time. After the vet came and helped her go, we took her body out to the porch, wrapped in one of her blankets. I went back inside to have a cry. Martha, who stayed with her a bit, was surprised to see a Monarch butterfly fluttered onto the porch and landed on our sweet, beloved old girl for a second, as if it was another traveler pausing to wish Madge well on her journey.

We're Back!

Hi everyone. I'm sorry for the four-year hiatus, but I got very busy with my work as a freelance journalist, and the blog just fell by the wayside. But I'm happy to report that Madge, our basset hound-pit bull, turned seven this year and is still a beloved member of our eccentric family.

She doesn't actually need reading glasses--those are just for style.

All ready for a walk with Kirby the puggle and Joey the terrier. 

She's calmer around people and not quite as camera shy as she used to be, but occasionally she lapses into the canine Greta Garbo of old.

Madge: Short legs, but BIG feet.

Hey, read me on National Geographic Channel's web site, too!

I haven't been posting quite as much lately, because I'm also writing a lot for the National Geographic Channel's Dogs Blog.  Here's my latest post on the genetic origins of small dogs, including my terrier Joey.

Bulldog beauty pageant

I'm not big on beauty pageants--for humans, that is. When the contestants are canines, on the other hand, it eliminates a lot of the potential downside. Dogs don't prance around in swimsuits and high heels, they don't twirl flaming batons or play excruciating flute solos, and they don't give incomprehensible answers to questions about Americans' knowledge of geography, or lack thereof. That's why I was thrilled to hear about the sixth annual Long Beach, CA Bulldog Beauty Contest  that will take place this Sunday, February 28 starting at 10 a.m. at Marketplace Long Beach. There are competitions for French and English bulldogs and senior dogs, and a separate pageant for pugs, too. Here’s a YouTube video with some of the highlights from last year’s spectacular, which attracted 350 contestants from four states and Canada. I'm hoping that they'll eventually add a basset hound-pit bull competition as well. 

It's a challenge photographing a basset hound-pit bull..

When I can convince Madge to allow me to take her picture, I then have to confront the dilemma of fitting her elongated body into the frame.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

She's probably thinking: "Oh jeez, he's pointing that little black thingie that lights up at me again. I hate this. But I'm too comfortable to get up and hide, so I'll just put up with it until he gets bored."

Squeeze her head, stubby legs and big paws into the frame, and you lose the back half of her.

Okay, this is a little better. I got almost everything, except for the rear paws and part of her tail.

I tried this angle, and got almost all of her, except for the tail. Had to stand all the way on the other side of the room, though.

I wonder what Madge looked like as a puppy?

Probably a little like this. This picture was posed by a Waco, TX Humane Society back in  2008, so hopefully this little guy has matured into a handsome adult basset hound pit bull.

Snoozing through the snowpocalypse

This morning,she dug a passageway into the backyard so she could do her business. A 30 inch snowfall presents certain challenges when you're a lowrider like she is. But she's surprisingly resourceful.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Madge consents, reluctantly, to be photographed

The terrible trio was romping on the couch this morning--Madge in the middle, with Joey play-biting her head and Kirby tangling with her tail--and it looked like a perfect opportunity for a great video or some pictures. But as soon as I reached for my iPhone, of course, they immediately stopped, and Madge bolted across the room. Fortunately, this time she curled up in her favorite chair, rather than hiding behind it. Once she was relaxed, I approached her gingerly, like a wildlife researcher tracking a rhino. To my amazement, she actually allowed me--albeit, obviously reluctantly--to take some pictures of her. Damn, she's a gorgeous canine! And I never noticed it before, but her coloration matches our earth-toned, ersatz Arts and Crafts movement decor perfectly.

By this point, she had that "are you through yet?" kind of look, so I figured that I better not press my luck.

Suddenly, they're everywhere!

Here's yet another basset hound-pit bull puppy that I found on Craigslist:

Here's a 6 or 7-year-old female named "Dear" who is available for adoption from Sacramento Canine Placement Assistance:

  

Meet Martin!

From the Eagle Tribune, a New Hampshire newspaper, here's yet another basset hound-pit bull available for adoption in Massachusetts.

Martin, an 8-month-old neutered male Basset Hound/pit bull mix, is a goofy puppy who loves to play.

He would do best in a home with children ages 8 and older, and with other friendly dogs as well. He gets along with cats, is a pretty happy-go-lucky dog, and is ready to be trained.

Martin is one of the many pets available for adoption at the shelter at Nevins Farm, 400 Broadway in Methuen. The shelter is open Tuesdays and Thursdays, from noon to 6 p.m., Wednesdays and Fridays, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturdays and Sundays, from noon to 4 p.m. It is closed on Mondays.

You can call the Methuen Animal Care and Adoption Center at Nevins Farm  at (978) 687-7453. 

"No Pictures, please!"

 Sometimes, Madge seems like the Greta Garbo of the canine world. On Sunday afternoon, she was romping around the living room with Kirby, looking totally flamboyant and wonderfully photogenic. The second that I picked up my iPhone to take a picture of them, she rushed to one of her hiding spots. Jeez, I don't think William Wegman ever had this problem--maybe I should email him for advice.

That evening, we also discovered that Madge seems to be a little worried about the ringer in the new $29.99  VTech phone-answering machine combo that Martha just brought home from Target. The first time it went off, she perked up her ears in alarm and started growling. Apparently it has several different ringtones, though, so I'm going to experiment and see if there's one that she can tolerate. Maybe I should write to VTech and suggest that they put the ring tones for various models up on their web site, so that I could test them out on my dog before I buy the phone. Of course, I could also just disconnect the ringer entirely. Other than fundraisers for animal rights groups, I think the only calls we get on the land line are from our neighbor Susan. Oddly, Madge is afraid of her too.

NY Mag story on the canine-human relationship

                        "I am not an animal! ...Well, okay, maybe I am."


This week's edition of New York magazine has an article entitled "The Rise of Dog Identity Politics," by John Homans, that delves into the peculiarities of the human-canine relationship and the deeper significance of dog owners' tendencies to take anthropomorphism to bizarre extremes. There's some interesting stuff in the piece--for example, according to Homans, the number of strays put down in shelters and pounds has decreased dramatically in recent years, thanks to spaying and neutering efforts and rescue adoptions. He also claims that northeastern urbanites increasingly have had to turn to the deep south as a source of rescue dogs, and that it's increasingly difficult to find shelter dogs who aren't pit bulls.  (Btw, that's an observation that I don't agree with at all--there's a shelter a couple of miles away from my house, the Washington Animal Rescue League, that continually has an ample supply of dogs from a range of breeds and mixes.)

One the most intriguing points that Homan raises is the question of whether there's a correlation between Americans' increasing alienation from one another--AKA the "Bowling Alone" phenomenon--and the increasingly intimate relationship that they have with their dogs:

If learned helplessness sounds like an urban condition, it may be because the dog is more and more an urban species. Even in the suburbs, the dog’s unleashed, unfenced, carefree outdoor life is largely at an end. The dogs are in the house, even in the bed. (The doghouse is now mostly for husbands.) There are no rules to this evolving, increasingly intimate arrangement, and it can give rise to a kind of canine identity crisis. Outside of its country context, the dog plays an ever more human role. Which can make things very confusing. “We’ve seen a linear explosion in pet populations in Western countries over the past 40 years,” Serpell tells me, and notes a correlation with the depressing statistics in Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone. “People are living more isolated lives, are having fewer children, their marriages aren’t lasting. All these things sort of break down a social network and happen to exactly coincide with the growth in pet populations. I think that what’s happening is simply that we’re allowing animals to fill the gap in our lives.”

Read more: The Rise of Dog Identity Politics -- New York Magazine http://nymag.com/news/features/63232/#ixzz0dsNJ1POf

 That's a convenient explanation, I suppose.  One problem with it, as social historian Katherine Grier details in her excellent 2006 book Pets in America, is that Americans' attitudes toward dogs--in particular, their reliance upon them as intimate companions and view of them as virtual family members--really developed and took hold in the late 1800s and early 1900s, long before the evils of postindustrial alienation. Beyond that, as anyone who's ever taken his or her dog for a walk through Takoma Park on a weekday evening knows, dogs actually give people an opportunity to connect with others. After all, I named this blog "So What Kind of Dog IS that?" because of all the complete strangers who've come up to me and struck up a conversation because they were fascinated by Madge's appearance. Conversely, I've talked to plenty of people that I've met in the park about their dogs. When I encounter another dog owner, we often have an instantaneous connection, because of our shared experiences.

That said, I still encourage you to read the article, and let me know your thoughts about it. As a bonus, it's got some great Richard Avedon-esque portraits of New York dogs, like this one (perhaps one of Madge's distant relatives).

Mooey and Joey, napping

They're grumpy if they get less than 16 hours a day. Madge awakened just in time to notice me snapping her photo, and give me a dirty look. Oddly, she's scared of my new iPhone, just as she was frightened by my old Motorola Razr.

Pre-dog walk chaos

Another portrait of Madge

Our 10-year-old son Minh used Photoshop to turn Madge's puppy photo into a painting, too. Pretty cool, huh?

Pretty as a Picture

My son Minh made this picture frame at his friend Kellyn's birthday party. He keeps it on his desk.

Another basset hound-pit bull discovered, in Kentucky

Meet Reed, a two year old basset hound-pit bull who's being offered for adoption by the Bowling Green-Warren County Humane Society in Kentucky. They don't provide any other information about him, but he's got a Madge-like body and legs and a classic pit bull head. He's got her white paws, too.

How centuries of breeding altered dogs' DNA

          Joey apparently thinks Madge was bred to provide him with a pillow.



Sometimes when look at Madge, I start to wonder about what her parents looked like. (Which one was the pit bull, and which one was the basset hound?) But I also think about her odd mix of traits, and how those traits originally were developed. Somebody, somewhere in the distant past must have liked the idea of having a dog with a super-long body and stubby legs, and tried to breed to accentuate those characteristics. Similarly, someone in the past must have found brindle coloring attractive (even though Madge's original owners didn't, and actually abandoned her at the dog pound because of it).

Anyway, I was fascinated to see this Washington Post article about scientists' quest to unravel the genetic past of  400 different breeds of dogs. So far, they've identified 150 or so gene locations, containing more than 1,600 genes, that have been altered by human-orchestrated breeding. Variations in the genes IGF1 and FGF5, for example, influence dogs' size and limb length, respectively. Another interesting tidbit: while dogs have been bred domestically for 14,000 years, most dog breeds have only been around for 500 to 1,000 years at most. In terms of evolution, that's barely the wink of an eye. That makes it all the more fascinating that human tinkering with dog genes has managed to create a creature as unusual as Madge.

We'll have to bring Madge with us next time...

   I noticed this sign posted at the entrance to an alleyway, next to a restaurant in Baltimore's Fells Point neighborhood. I suspect Madge might be a little puzzled by a soft-shell crab sandwich, though--she's more of a meat-and-potatoes kind of girl. (Martha and I lived on Light Street in Federal Hill back in the day, just down the street from the Cross Street Market and the sadly now-defunct Herb's Bargain Center.) I'd almost forgotten how much I used to dig B-more (AKA Ballmer, Mobtown, and the Queen City), which is a wonderfully eccentric, free-spirited and unpretentiously hip metropolis. Our terrier Joey actually was found wandering the streets there, perhaps in search of a Natty Bo.

 BTW, my grade school pal Greg's scorchin' blues band, Nothin' But Trouble, plays a 4-8 p.m. gig at the fabulous Cats Eye Pub in Fells Point every month. Check them out sometime.